he answers the summons and she marvels at fate. when he approaches, the last thing she expects is to be asked who she is and she blinks, not yet knowing if he's simply thick in the head or if he's asking her out of existentialism. 

"your councilwoman," she says after a rolling of her tongue. her hand goes to her hips and she fiddles with her gauntlets, pulling at the leather straps with her teeth. clawed fingers flex and settle into all her form-fitted grooves. 

"but mostly i'm just me and i don't know what that means yet, really. a better question, i think, is who are you?"

Roy Aker

☉

"okay," she says and she examines her gloves thoughtfully, checks over her armor one more time just to make sure everything is as it should be. a shortsword swings off her hip, sandwiched between two pokeballs. rather than reach for any of those, she goes for the ball nestled in her choker.

her expression softens. 

"you're a footnote in my family's history. i don't know how or why, but if you're looking for answers, we'll have a better chance of finding them together."

she tilts her chin towards the portal. "have you been in there yet?"

Roy Aker

☉

"there's nothing like this," she says with a grimace. all of the others had played tricks on the mind, but none had shaken her like the border had. she has too many complicated ties to the place. her best friend had been in there, waiting and wandering, and she couldn't stomach facing the unknown to save him. 

her mother is in there. or maybe she isn't. maybe, after freya startled, she passed over, satisfied enough to see the daughter she'd never laid eyes on grown into adulthood. 

"you might find family in there. if they haven't passed on. are you ready for that?" the look on her own face says she isn't. 

but enough dallying.

"see you on the other side," she says and steps through, pokeball still clutched - unopened - in her hand.

Roy Aker

☉

and on the other side she waits. lyune is beside her, tattered wings folded on his back. the metal mechanism lining the left side gleams silver in the low orange light filtering through the smoggy skyline above them. she has a hand on his foreleg and she stares at the river in the distance where skeletal boats drift in the current, bobbing against their tethers. 

above them drift the ghosts. blurry smudges skirt above the horizon, shapes hardly distinguishable against the fog and the periodic silhouette of mountains. 

her breath is steady and measured. when he crosses, she startles a bit, nerves betraying her. her sygna suit thrums and lyune turns his large head, pupils slitting. 

"welcome to the land of the dead, mr. aker."

Roy Aker

☉

"for answers," she says.

lyune keeps his measured stare. his tongue forks from between scaled lips, tasting soulfire. he sees this man for what he is, scents the blood threads that tie them together, but the only transcription he can muster for his mistress is a familial hum, one that freya misinterprets.

"lyune senses them." theodore, sophia, her mother, her father - she doesn't know. would lyune know her birth mother or will she be as much a stranger to him as she is to her?

"spirits from our world get trapped here sometimes. caught adrift. there's a chance my family, and yours, haven't moved on." they could fly. she could beckon him astride lyune and be upon the boats in several minutes, but this is hallowed ground they tread.

this place has rules.

"they'll be in the river." she pauses in her stride. "if l you want to turn back, i won't think less of you." a twitch of her lips. "not that my opinion of you particularly means anything."

Roy Aker

☉

and so they walk to that place carved inside the border. sepia smoke curls around their ankles, drifts over their wrists. it fans gently off of lyune as the salamence trudges beside them. his metal contraptions clink as he walks. 

she's never been want to fill silences with meaningless chatter and to do so now feels almost sacrilege. besides, he seems much the same as her in this regard, and so in star-crossed companionship they walk this plane until the ground gives way to brackish water. 

coins jingle in her pocket. she withdraws two and steps neatly into one of the bobbing boats. a gimmighoul crawls out from within its chest, scuttling over the weathered deck, and eyes the treasures. she drops them into its waiting palm and it slinks back, form blurring like a shadow. 

the rope untethers itself from the docks. lyune settles back on his haunches, waiting by the shore.

Roy Aker

☉